I spent a great deal of time thinking about what to address next in my artistic review. I selected an entire year…yes a year…that I spent developing work for an invitational show in Santa Fe. The experience opened my mind to what I could do with textiles and changed my thought process completely. Primary to the success of this project was allowing myself the luxury of time. I closed my studio and gallery in Madrid, purchased a new studio in Santa Fe and closed myself up for the year with…ugh… no income. I had anticipated selling from the new studio (because it was zoned commercial) but once I got working, I knew I couldn’t produce for sales. I sold everything…thank you everyone who bought…from my studio closing and brought nothing to my new studio except my furniture. It was a bit scary, but I needed to invest in myself and it truly paid off. I learned SO MUCH…I can’t even begin to explain.
Some background…From the very start of my career, I made art because I love it and because I wanted to offer anyone who wanted it, the ability to add a beautiful piece of original art to their life. To this day, I keep my work affordable and welcoming…accessible to everyone. To not sell for all this time was scary and I felt I was losing touch with my collectors, but it was, in reality, a blessing. Not only did I learn how to work with different fabrics, I learned to trust my instincts and to create work on a large scale, something I had always wanted to do.
Many years ago, I wrote a note about discipline in my sketchbook…without attribution …and it has always been incorporated into my art process…discipline is the difference between setting goals and actually accomplishing them. I feel I accomplished something that year through the discipline of working each day in my studio…I hope you enjoy reading about it….from the studio
A Full Year ….originally posted August 23, 2018
Hello again! I have spent the past year moving to a new studio and developing work to exhibit in a show this fall. It has been a fabulous experience and I am thrilled with the results. Let’s talk about the textile construction series. The piece pictured above was lurking in the back of my mind for quite some time…since August of 2017. I dyed and painted 60 yards of cheesecloth last fall with a vague vision of how I wanted to use it. I looked at the resulting pile and organized and REorganized AND REORGANIZED it, hoping to ignite a spark that might develop into a firestorm. Two smaller storms blew through and two pieces were complete, but this piece was still rumbling in the background. (I will show you the other two pieces sometime…they are also in the exhibit.) Alas, when I found the metal that I assembled to look like an adornment, a necklace, a whatever, I was well on my way. In my head, I felt the piece was rather Egyptian, with flowing robes and brilliant neck pieces, but I wasn’t sure of titling it to reflect that feeling. Pharaoh’s wardrobe, Pharaoh’s necklace, blah, blah…nothing seemed to fit, until I thought of a Pharaoh’s queen, staring at her gowns laid out by her servants and thinking “I never know what to wear to the chariot races…what to wear…what to wear?”, a perennial female conundrum. Viola….completion. I don’t feel a piece is done until it is titled to reflect its conception. I have quite strong feeling about this in all the work I have done for this show…much more so than I have in the past. Eight pieces of mine will be exhibited at the Capitol Rotunda Gallery in Santa Fe along with the work of seven other invited artists. This piece is the largest cheesecloth construction, but the other two showing are not that much smaller…I love working on a larger scale! The show opens September 7 and runs through December 14. I also developed a series of mixed media vessels for the show…my new passion…in another post…from the studio
studio 18 art 